Our Study Group

Actually, this really isn't about a group, it's actually about one person. I've been meaning to write this before, but haven't really had much time. But after last night's performance I think it's a good time to get a snippit of trivia about Marcus Camby, or more specifically the meaning of his tattoo.

Now, I have watched just about every game this season, the exception is when I am travelling and I don't have my internet connection. My girlfriend is also a big and growing Blazers fan, despite her growing up in Japan and never really watching the NBA until the last year. When we got Camby, she took one look at that 'kanji' on the side of his arm and said "What the heck is that"? (actual wording may have varied). Hanzimatter gives us a definition, but it's not entirely comlpete. They say that the first charecter is a group that doesn't exisit due to the relationship with the second one. However, standing alone, even I could recognize it as "study". The second one is spot on, a group, people or tribe (which I had no idea about). While the same charecter often has several pronounciations, the Japanese consensus pronounciation for this set seems to be "ben zoku". Now, as for meaning, just mashing two kanji together doesn't make some combonation of the them. Usually the sum is completely different from the parts, as exampled in putting the kanji for "relax" and the one for "whole" together, you get "safety". However, putting these two kanji together has no intrinsic meaning, which is probably a result of why hanzismatter gives the description that it does. When Japanese people see or hear about it, they crack up laughing much like I do when I see this kind of stuff here in Japan. However, when it comes to my house, we normally do just combine the two in some kind of fashion, and cheer on our favorite Study Group.